


in one breath

by mosscoveredking



Series: contrapuntal [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Fluffy Ending, Hopeful Ending, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied abuse, M/M, TWs in notes, Violence, apple incident, but with a cool new twist!, dream and night are HUSBANDS, gnangangangnan, hurt/comfort but it's mostly just hurt, implied rape, my MAIngO; is to BLOW Up the AU! and then act like i don't know nobadayyY!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24245449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosscoveredking/pseuds/mosscoveredking
Summary: His arms curled around Night’s waist with the intention to keep, to hold, to guard and make safe in perpetuity. “They tempt me, too,” he murmured lightly, staring into the branches around them.
Relationships: Dream/Nightmare - Relationship, Dreammare
Series: contrapuntal [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751566
Comments: 12
Kudos: 85





	in one breath

**Author's Note:**

> more detailed content warnings in end notes!!
> 
> tws: blood, self-harm, implied rape/ongoing assault, brief description of injuries, and all the violence that comes with the apple incident

Nestling further into his lover like a mammal curling into itself to sleep, Dream breathed in deeply and let the metallic aroma of fresh blood nauseate him. When was the last time, he mused numbly, that all he smelled was knitted sweaters and herbal tea? His arms curled around Night’s waist with the intention to keep, to hold, to guard and make safe in perpetuity. “They tempt me, too,” he murmured lightly, staring into the branches around them. 

The beginnings of twilight stretched into the sky, wisps of stars creeping their way westward as the sun slowly sank and died. The air around them was thick with the electricity of a storm long overdue, gusts of wind disturbing the golden-green leaves and puppeteering the shadows to dance. As the leaves fluttered about like scared birds, they revealed flashes, glimpses of eternal night and endless wealth, of impoverished ennui and domestic felicity, of unfathomable attrition and unabridged safety. The potential and prowess held the lovers’ captivity in full, a treat dangling in front of a starving child, a drink, nutrition, the promise of survival for one more night.

Nightmare leaned back into him, the fear and pain melting off of his bones as a layer of frost held to a candle. His gaze was transfixed in the maze of branches and bracts, body limp in the hold of his beloved. He was sore everywhere, dirtied and bloodied with a chest that hurt when he breathed and wounds chafed by the cuffs of his sleeves. Dream’s hands, meant for crafting clover chains and sewing heavy quilts, splayed over Night’s fractured ribs and wove sweet healing magic into the bones. 

“One day,” he promised lowly, with a voice designed to sing encouragement and mouth meant for making love, “one day.”

\---

Dream had imagined the blades gleaming in firelight, the shouting, and the pounding of rancorous feet staring him down and wrecking his cogency. The imagery of canine fur bristling and shining in ruddy torchlight, of fishing nets and shovels and mattocks, of deep-throated snarls dripping with hate and phlegm, had kept him awake many nights. He had no idea to expect or how to deal with his own anger boiling and bleeding and writhing and making him sick enough to puke. 

Violated and heaving for breath, Nightmare curled behind his ankles and between the roots, head low and hands bloody. There was skin stuck in the cracks between his phalanges and an assortment of fluid gumming up the joints in his wrists. Dream wished they’d burned this place downs aeons ago - if he had known it would only be him standing, they surely would have. 

He collected Nightmare in his arms strong from weed-pulling and water-fetching, cradling his shocked body as he blathered sweet, nonsensical sounds that might have been thoughtful reassurances. Night whimpered, curling into his husband like that would undo the damage, like his bones alone would shelter them from the approaching hurricane, as if he held on tight enough, the whole world would melt away. He was thrusted from the embrace suddenly, shoved into the branches with none of the gentleness Dream spoiled him with. With the encouragement of fervent pleas, he scrambled, blinded by tears and blood and another person’s sweat. He climbed upward, deeper, forward, his memory doing most of the work, all the foot and handholds he knew so intimately serving him one last time. Dream was right behind him, right with him, pushing and coaxing and steadying as they climbed.

The gnashing teeth and sturdy bodies ordered Dream’s attention again, all rage and fear and demands for justice. What were once dots of red and gold were now very clearly torches throwing light and shadow. He could almost see the whites of eyes. 

He has known broken bones. He has known scraped periosteum and throbbing migraines, marrow-deep cuts and twisted joints. He’s felt the sting of injuries laced with malice and purpose. The rope, the crowbars, the sledgehammers and all the intentions of ripping their bones from their joints -- he had let so much happen to Night already. If he was going to die, it would have to be while protecting him.

Gold flashed outside his vision, resonating with the same old promise. 

“Nightmare, my love.” He hauled himself to the last branch sturdy enough for their combined weight and took his husband’s face in hand with all the tenderness he could muster. Night leaned and kissed him for the very last time, and hard and deep as he possibly could, blotting out the stream of apologies Dream was whimpering.

“Forgive me.” The guardian of positivity pulled back and desecrated his life’s purpose. 

He never expected euphoria to taste so bitter. It exploded onto his tongue and dribbled down his chin, working its way into every crevice of his mandible. (A small part of him was very briefly reminded of eating watermelons straight from the vine with his best friend, insides warmed by the sun.) His body drank it up like it was a desideratum he’d been divested of. He couldn’t feel his jaw working desperately nor his hands reaching for more, only the overwhelming bliss constricting his soul, steroids to his magic. Another bite, a bigger bite - he felt himself succumbing to the rapture, and at that moment, he knew he could keep his little star safe.

Manic glee, a great violence, retribution, a sick satisfaction, and it was over.

\---

Nightmare kissed his husband with all he had and all he was. It was bereaved, sloppy, and he didn’t care. Armegedon raged around him, the cataclysm of cozy nights and lazy mornings, but Dream’s kisses had always healed in the past, blocked the world out when he so desperately needed it, so why not now? 

Dream broke the kiss and whimpered. He wasn’t crowding him against the bole anymore, and without his sturdy frame a hair’s breadth away, Night knew he would fall into oblivion.

Something important happened. In the thick of traumatized stupor, he couldn’t tell what it was, only that Dream wasn’t holding him, wasn’t loving on his bones. He was doing something, fuelled by hatred and terror and equal amounts of unconditional love, something that hurt yet felt so very divine. The line between Nightmare’s emotions and those of his counterpart had always been thin and obscured; Dream’s fear was his own in every sense. He felt horribly detached from the situation and the other’s aura, senses grated down and muted, depriving him of sight and sound and emotion. Dream needed him though, he could feel that much, he needed him to be strong and stay safe and stay alive and forgive… forgive him.

There were tears streaming down Dream’s face, but they looked wrong. Too bright, like firefly blood, and his hands, his face, his head - everything was wrong. Nightmare watched from far away as his husband reached and pulled a golden apple from its stem.

With a mind clouded from trauma and a body in shock, Night followed his best friend’s lead. It had to be better than sitting and watching. He looked to his side where he knew a black apple to be hanging, all saccharine, assurance, and undertaking, and stretched his fingers out to brush against it. His movements felt like he was in a dreamscape, bogged down by surrealism and forces he couldn’t control. He willed his arm to move faster - this was desperate, this was life-or-death, he needed to move faster and _now_ or else he might never be able to catch up with Dream and he absolutely couldn’t be alone, so why couldn’t he move?

He wrenched his eyes shut and sobbed like it would help. When he could see again, there was a blackness cupped in his hands so dark it hurt to look at, a sweet taste on his tongue, and something on his teeth that felt too much like slug slime. He closed his eyes again and the infirmity drained out of his used body. Between the terror and the rage and the influx of everything awful crashing into his system, there wasn’t room for it anymore. Despair had never felt so good.

Snatching another from its cradle and sinking his teeth in was reflex, an instinct coded into him; it was an age-old itch being scratched in a most decadent way.

Overwhelming anguish overtook all he’d known, a mortal terror was extinguished, an influx of power, blooming safety, and it was over.

\---

The first tails and arms of a candy red sun stretched lavishly from the east horizon while a waxing moon, almost full, shone with an ethereal glow low in the dusky sky. Smoke and death hung heavy in the still air, and the cracked ground bled insects in every direction. Dream opened his eyes to a massive blaze devouring the valley below him, and up from it wafted the smell of burning flesh. A strange calmness held him and he reasoned that the fire knew what it was doing.

He watched the inferno consume its meal for a moment before looking down to the light pressure on his chest. His head felt heavier than it should have, full of fluid or bearing a crown irreconcilable to his body. 

Something slick and warm tightened on his wrist, coiled around his radius. Two more wet, pliable mysteries were curled around his fingers. In his lap and tucked neatly under his arms, fitting perfectly with his body, someone very important was beginning to stir.

There was something missing. He should smell like hearth and fresh bread, not gore and salt. And the sticky tar on his head, shining in the unnatural light, was wrong, very, very askew. Dream remembered that this person had been hurt in a number of ways too awful to think about, ways he could not envision right now if he tried, and a sudden fear gripped him.

“Nightmare,” he spoke with rising notes of desperation, without really knowing why. The appellation felt familiar on his tongue like a first language.

The being lifted his head and breathed, “Dream,” and a tidal wave of recognition swept him. He remembered spring days spent playing in the gardens they sowed, brewing tea in the sun, bathing in the river and playing in the creeks, watching minnows and crawdads, baking and eating pastries until they couldn’t anymore, being held tight when it thundered - listening to crickets and cicadas sing and the music Night could make, catching lightning bugs and making special jars to hold them in, sleeping bare on silk sheets - the scent of fall clinging to their bodies, gathering campfire kindlings together, reading to him in the safety of their pillowfort by light of tiny lanterns - watching the sun filter through icicles, making snowmen and igloos and sledding down that huge hill for hours and hours, brewing hot cocoa afterwards and loving until they were satisfied--

\-- he remembered cleaning blood from Nightmare’s wrists with tears on his face and hatred in his chest, trying to kiss his bruises better, wiping red dirt from his moonstone bones, setting his leg in a cast and begging for answers, healing hairline fractures again and again until it was second nature--

\-- he remembered Nightmare sprinting up the hill to him, blood on his chest and lap and hands, collapsing at his feet, apologizing endlessly with a voice that was fucked raw, trying to heal and soothe, hiding him somewhere and making a choice--

\-- he remembered spilling crimson all over the grass, scattering dust into the wind and the mud, the wet crunching of bones and branches under new magic, the smell of kerosene on his hands and a horrible, twisted wailing he wished had stayed buried.

Night peppered kisses to the side of Dream’s face and down his neck, reaching his shoulder and trailing back up until Dream claimed his mouth with a deep, desperate kiss of his own, his hands instinctively coming up to hold his counterpart’s face. They stayed close when they broke, breathing unsteady and bones trembling. 

“Nighty, Nightlight-- let, let me look at you…” 

Tar dribbled from his right socket, splattered across the top of his head and smeared along his face, dripping down his jaw and neck. Three black tentacles sprouted from his socket, still intertwined with Dream’s wrist. 

“Does it hurt…?”

“No, no,” Night soothed with a quaver in his voice, “A little tender is all…” In his left socket, a purple and cyan slit flickered nervously over Dream’s face. “Are _you_ okay?”

“Of course, I-- what’s the matter?”

Nightmare reached up with a weak, shaking arm and Dream felt a small tug on the side of his head in a way he didn’t think was possible. He touched the base of his skull where the feeling protruded from and found new growth. He felt them out - huge, branching antlers stretching father than he could reach. Nightmare then placed a gentle hand over Dream’s left cheek, his thumb stroking underneath his eye, lightly disturbing a small curtain of something in a ticklish way.

“What is that?” Dream asked, voice small.

“You have moss on your cheek. There’s no light in this eye. Can-- can you see?”

Dream closed the opposite eye. “Oh. No, I guess not.”

“We match, then.” Nighty smiled in the softest way, a way he hadn’t practiced since his metacarpals became stained with mahogany, and lavender dewdrop tears mixed with liquid hatred.

Dream basked in that moonlight and wisteria smile, staring down at his lover, his home, his moon and sky and grounded roots with the same infatuation he’s always held. Below them, the fire began to dwindle, finally satisfied and without any more filth to cleanse. To their backs lied the shattered remnants of broken oaths and fulfilled promises, a once sacred thing desecrated in a most cathartic way. They were freed and they were safe, with nothing to guard but each other and nothing to do but love.

In a few hours, once new bodies were thoroughly explored and loved upon, unused magic would seek doorways to places heretofore unimagined...

**Author's Note:**

> cws: heavy description of blood, light description/mention of fractured ribs and other bone-related injuries, all abuse happens off screen but there's a lot of references, implied self harm (mentioned multiple times), brief puke mention, mention/references to sex, there's quite a few nods to past assault that was ongoing (all off screen), very recent rape is heavily implied, heavy descriptions of weaponry, there's a big angry mob, life-or-death situation, dissociation, genocide, fire, (painless and nonmedical) body modification
> 
> let me know if i missed anything!!
> 
> this was a lot of fun!! i'm quite proud of most of this, definitely the best writing i've done in a while. i've never tried anything with this much action, so for a first attempt i like how it turned out <3 plus i _adore_ dreammare, so any times with thems is good times.
> 
> please let me know what you thought - i really love concrit and don't be afraid to correct me on any typos! (i'd also be more than happy to discuss artistic choices!!) thank you for reading!! <33


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